And since no one overcame the 1-in-292 million odds to claim Wednesday’s big prize now and there’s a record-breaking haul up for grabs this weekend ($675 million as of this writing), you’re not winning that one either.

If you want to be a winner when it comes to these giant jackpots, what you do after losing will determine your fortune. If you are like most people, you throw your losing tickets away and don’t give the whole thing a second thought until the next time you buy a ticket or the jackpot again gets so large that it dominates conversation.

In a moment, we’ll show how you can have a second chance to turn the losing ticket in your giant prize-drawing into some personal gain.

First, however, I should note that I’m not a big fan of lotteries, having never even purchased so much as a scratch-off ticket.

With the odds of buying the winning Powerball ticket having been lowered last year to the 1-in-292 million level, I figure my chances of finding the lucky ticket are about as good as your odds of buying it, so I keep my money in my wallet and my eyes open for ticket stubs.

Despite the daunting odds, Americans reportedly spend more than $70 billion on lottery tickets each year, with about two-thirds of the money going to scratch tickets and the rest pursuing daily, semi-weekly and weekly numbers.

The good news about your lottery loss is that you will avoid becoming one of those horror stories that gets trotted out with every big jackpot, where the winnings were squandered, blown, wasted or misspent on the way to renewed financial and personal ruin.

Here’s where you get to win, because while a nine-digit jackpot is not in your future — even if you count the spaces to the right of the decimal — there’s a good chance you might someday come into a big chunk of money.

Whether that sudden money is an inheritance, a lump-sum distribution, an annual bonus, a lucrative stretch of overtime, a retirement “incentive” from your employer, a surprise chance to pick up extra pay or some other windfall is unimportant.

The lottery jackpot winner can afford to be a bit thoughtless with some of their winnings – though they must eventually get serious to make sure they avoid the well-publicized problem of blowing the money – but the average person really can’t afford frivolity with the few windfalls they get in a lifetime.

That’s where the lottery comes in.

Getting the most from your losing ticket is as simple as holding it in your hands and saying “What if …?”

What-if games played around a jackpot are a good thing, a form of self-examination that can have a positive effect on everyday decision-making, even if your ship never comes in.

Experts who study the psychology of investing suggest finishing the following statement with as many answers as apply.

“If I came into a big sum of money tomorrow, I would . . .”

Your answers might include quitting your job, paying off credit cards, eliminating other debts, securing college tuition for the kids, paying off the mortgage, securing your retirement, making donations to your favorite charities, helping out your family, buying a dream house or car or taking that fantasy vacation, starting your own business or buying a franchise and more.

Keep adding your ideas to the list until it includes everything you would have hoped, wanted or expected to do had you won the giant jackpot.

Decide which items come first, and which are more secondary, which would come in handy in case you have to split the grand prize with other winners.

The result is a financial wish list with your dreams and desires ranked in priority order.

That’s useful, even if you never win a jackpot.

If zeroing debt would be your first move after collecting lottery winnings, it probably should be the first move in your everyday financial planning. If you therefore earn some extra income and can reduce debt and eliminate some of the stress it adds to your life, that’s likely where you should put most of the money you get from any personal windfall.

You are more likely to get the job done with a conventional solution — cutting spending or living on a budget — than from hitting the jackpot, but you are working toward the same financial destination either way.

And as long as you are playing “what-if lotto,” consider your losings too. That $70 billion in lottery spending boils down to more than $300 per year per adult nationwide. The peak, nationally, is in Rhode Island and South Dakota, where the average person spends over $750 per year.

Since lottery players are habitual spenders, consider what happens if ticket-buying is curtailed.

Set aside $50 a month for the next 30 years and, assuming the stock market’s historic rate of return over the last 90 years, you’ll come away with a jackpot of more than $125,000. It might not feel like a jackpot, but it’s a way to win the lottery by not playing it (or playing it less).

That’s particularly important to remember in the face of a big jackpot, like the one from this week, because the what-if question that most consumers didn’t even think about — but most need to answer in their own financial lives — was the one no one focused on this week, specifically “What if I never win the lottery?”

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